Introduction

Introduction

Linux has a way of keeping things real. You can pay a lot for proprietary software if you listen to the people who sell it, but before you flash your debit card, be sure you can't find a free Linux tool that does the same thing. Multimedia tools are an especially lucrative market for software vendors. If you come from a Windows or Mac environment, you can pay hundreds of dollars for audio and video applications. What better reason to turn to Linux, where similar tools are free and often easier to use. This month we explore some audio and video tools for the Linux environment, including the Audacity sound editor and the convenient FFmpeg command-line video-editing utility.

Related content

The amazing thing about Linux is that it can always take you one step more. You can already play music and edit videos using the powerful tools included free of charge on any standard Linux system, so you don't need a Linux magazine to tell you how to play an MP3 file. But we'd rather help you with the next step.

This month we introduce you to apt and show you some of the differences between apt and apt‑get. We also show you how to profile a monitor for better color reproduction, and we delve into a little known utility called USB/ IP that lets you access USB-connected devices attached to other computers on your network.